The UK Government clarifies the scope of the new national security and investment bill

In November 2020, the UK published a draft of its new National Security and Investment Bill ("NSIB"), heralding the introduction of a new regime for reviewing investments on national security grounds. The Bill introduced a mandatory pre-screening mechanism for certain deals involving investments in sensitive sectors. The draft was accompanied by proposed definitions for the seventeen "sensitive sectors" to which the mandatory notification requirement would apply. These definitions were the subject of a public consultation, which ran from 11 November 2020 until 6 January 2021. For more detail on the scope of the NSIB, please see our original alert here. The Department of Business Energy and Industrial Strategy ("BEIS") has now published the government response, providing welcome